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Sainthood's not for sissies
Read the article / show / issue that provoked me to write a letter and my response below that or go straight to my response
Date Posted on this Site
October 15, 2010
Publication
Toronto Star
Publication Date
October 12, 2010
Published Content
Rosie DiManno
ROME—They were madmen and hysterical girls, soft in the head or hardened in the soul, evangelists and hermits, perhaps delusional but invariably holier-than-thou.
Not very good company, I'd suspect, what with all that piety and moral superiority, the raving and the proselytizing.
Martyrs of the Roman Catholic Church hopefully got their rewards in heaven because they sure as hell suffered on Earth.
It's what made them saints — got their tickets punched, halo-crowned directly into the Church's Hall of Fame, no "miracle" required for canonization.
Perhaps being disemboweled, mutilated, crucified or beheaded — and refusing to disavow their faith — was considered phenomenal enough.
For all his tribulations, the crosses he bore over a long lifetime, Montreal's Brother André — who will be formally elevated to sainthood come Sunday, only the second native-born Canadian so honoured — got off easy by comparison. He performed a bunch of scientifically inexplicable healings and launched construction of what would become the grand St. Joseph's Oratory on Mount Royal and, let's be honest, bored everyone to tears with his endless idolizing of Christ's foster father, the "blessed" he'd fixated on since childhood.
But he died peacefully in bed at age 91, even as nuns and nurses palmed bits of his apparel, right down to chopping up his tunic sash as keepsakes.
That was in 1937. These days, the relics would probably show up on eBay, along with tufts of Andre's hair and his toenail shavings. Heightened security at the reliquary that contains his heart has prevented a repeat of the 1978 organ-snatching caper.
It is difficult, in a modern age, for even Canada's 13 million Catholics to grasp the significance, or relevance, of sainthood. The rituals of canonization are obscure; the whole point of the thing mocked as an anachronism. Wonders of technology have overtaken burning bush marvels — or a cripple throwing off crutches — and awe is rare.
"Saints preserve us" used to be a heartfelt expression. Now it's dead language.
Still, in the Catholic Church, there's a patron saint, with feast day attached, for just about every little cause, every profession, every special interest and pathology. Prayers to a particular saint are considered more effective when invoked for a specific, related purpose.
Lawyers have a patron saint in St. Yves, animals in St. Francis of Assisi (like André, a brother, never a priest).
St. Martin is the go-to-guy for alcoholics, somewhat illogically protector of both vineyards and sots. The Church merged his resumé with the Roman god of Bacchus when Christianity co-opted the pagan realm of deities. Thus the same fellow who guards the grape is recommended to drunkards, to save them from their tippling sin. Go figure.
Another multi-tasking saint is Sebastian, patron of archers, pin-makers and running. The first part is understandable, albeit rather sadistic — Sebastian was bound at the stake and pierced with arrows so that he resembled a pin-cushion. I'd think he'd never want to see pointy things again. And running? Well, he was also a centurion, extremely fit and able to withstand long physical exertions. If transported to modern-day Toronto, he'd probably be in favour of bicycle lanes, too.
Clare, not Oprah, is the patron saint of television. Pope Pius XII made her so in 1958 on the basis that, when Clare was too ill to attend mass, the service miraculously showed up on her bedroom wall, full video and audio.
Somewhat awkwardly, the Vatican has tried to fit saints in with a modernizing world. Thus Isidore is the patron saint of computers, 1,000 years after his death. The Church rationalizes that Isidore — first Christian writer to compile a summary of Catholic theology, his Etymologiae similar to a dictionary — gave structure to his work akin to that of a database. We pray to Isidore when the server goes down.
St. Paul, one of the original Apostles, is patron saint of writers because of his prolific contributions to the New Testament. We pray to Paul on deadline.
Money may be the root of all evil but it also has its own patron saint in Matthew, tax collector for Rome in Galilee — a reviled profession of fraud and corruption — turned Apostle. Poor Matthew was put to death with a halberd, a pike fitted with an axe head, in Ethiopia. More specific to money problems is St. Nicholas. He threw three purses of gold through the window of a nobleman to prevent the man from selling his daughters into prostitution to pay off his debts.
Didn't lift a finger for corporate fraudsters such as Enron's CEO, but perchance smiled down, belatedly, partly, on Catholic convert Conrad Black.
Common to the lives of the saints — those who were martyred — was a self-righteous, heedless fervour that all but insisted on persecution. Today, we'd put them on antipsychotics or lock 'em up in a padded room. This era's self-cutters were yesterday's "mortification" practitioners — flailing themselves out of radical devotion or in symbolic sympathy with Christ. (Even the young Brother André, though scolded for it by adoptive aunt and parish priest, took to wearing an iron chain next to his skin while praying.)
More typically were the girls and young women — Freud would have a field day with these female patients — who punished themselves excessively as a commitment of faith; also, to avoid marriage, claiming they'd pledged their virginity to Christ.
The Church has always been freakishly big on virgins. I dare not comment on the Immaculate Conception. But there was St. Barbara, who had her breasts cut off in front of the crowds and then beheaded; St. Apollonia, who had all her teeth violently pulled out during an uprising against Christians (and was afterwards made patron saint of dentists!); St. Agnes, who was dragged naked through the streets of Rome for refusing to marry the prefect's son, then burned at the stake; and beautiful St. Bridget, so horrified at the thought a man might fancy her that she prayed for ugliness — and got it — at which point horrified daddy packed her off to a nunnery. (Rewarded for her virtue, God made Bridget beautiful again.)
The Church calls them martyrs, glorified. Many of us would call them sadly neurotic, pimped for piety or insane.
My Response Letter
Wow! Such vitriol for men and women who did good and resisted evil. Perhaps there is a bit of envy there. (It is, after all, a capital sin.) The good news for Ms. DiManno is that she too can become a saint... and without worrying about the virginity thing she deplores! All she needs is to make a good, contrite confession accompanied by a sincere intention to amend her life and then trust in God.
Jason Gennaro
Was my response published?
No